As I wrote in an earlier article (Allen Telescope Array, April 26, 2011), there's a joke about lotteries. It might be known to everyone, but I'll retell it, anyways.

A religious man prays to God each night that he will win the state lottery. He does this for many years, but he never wins. Finally, the exasperated man asks God in a prayer, "Why won't you let me win the lottery?" God replies, "I want you to win, but you never buy a ticket!"

My father enjoyed playing the New York Lottery in which three numbers from 0-9 were drawn. That's despite the state's small payout for the 1 in 1000 odds. As many who were not statistically-minded, he thought there was a way for him to "beat the system." He recorded each day's winning numbers looking for a pattern of repeating digits, and he asked me to do an analysis to determine what numbers he should play. I couldn't just dismiss the idea as absurd, so I did a careful mathematical analysis to prove the point. He was disappointed, but I think he continued to play.

A recent lottery story had a happy outcome for one New York City man, Robert Bailey, who won the largest jackpot in New York Lottery history, $343.8 million, by playing Powerball.[1-3] This was his share of the $687.8 million overall jackpot that was split with another winner in Iowa.[2] To achieve such a win, Bailey matched all six of the numbers drawn. What makes his win the topic of this blog article is that he had played the same numbers for more than 25 years. He got the numbers from a family member, and he was faithful to his strategy of playing just those numbers. News reports highlighted his strategy, and many people will think that it was key to his success.[1-3]

Anyone schooled in statistics realizes that the odds of winning are unchanged between playing the same numbers against a randomset of numbers, or playing random numbers against a random set of numbers. We statisticians are likely to be far outnumbered by all the people who don't understand this and will now emulate Bailey's strategy. In any case, an easy computer simulation proves our case.